


there is no death, there is the Force

by purrfectj



Series: The Jedi Code [5]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Angst, Carbonite, F/M, Father-Son Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Infidelity, Love, Mother-Son Relationship, The Force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2016-01-24
Packaged: 2018-05-16 00:51:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5806906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purrfectj/pseuds/purrfectj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Listen, asshole,” she tries but he, Valkorian, the Endless Emperor who can apparently jabber endlessly, too, just drones right on over her, something about destiny and change and the galaxy and oh no, oh no, that's a ship, that's an XS Freighter class ship below them, surrounded by enemies, alight in the middle of a firefight, and oh no, oh no, she can't breathe, she's going to fall, she's going to scream, not them, not them, he can't have taken what little good she's left behind her, what little good she's ever known or ever done or ever felt...</p>
            </blockquote>





	there is no death, there is the Force

**Author's Note:**

> So this took longer than anticipated and it gets another chapter soon because...well. Rogen and Keelyn and Atlan deserve some happiness, I think. Thanks for reading. Oh, right, and Keelyn's sister is going to get her own series soon. Look for the Sith Code. 

Keelyn has been a lot of things over the course of her life: an orphan, a survivor, hungry, cold, angry, defensive, a smuggler, a wife, a mother, a Republic privateer, a patriot, an adulteress. Being dead, however, being dead and being haunted at the same time, well, that's new. New but not particularly pleasant, though: she's being haunted by Valkorian, some guy who calls himself the Endless Emperor and she can't even dispute his claim because the fucking bastard just won't die even after a blaster bolt through his back and it's just her Force-damned luck that he's got her trapped in some dream (nightmare) that he controls and she is so much detritus in his wake. 

“Listen, asshole,” she tries but he, Valkorian, the Endless Emperor who can apparently _jabber_ endlessly, too, just drones right on over her, something about destiny and change and the galaxy and oh no, oh no, that's a ship, that's an XS Freighter class ship below them, surrounded by enemies, alight in the middle of a firefight, and oh no, oh no, she can't breathe, she's going to fall, she's going to scream, not them, not them, he can't have taken what little good she's left behind her, what little good she's ever known or ever done or ever felt... 

Wait. Wait wait wait. Yes, yes, it's an XS Freighter class starship, but it's not...it's not...that's not... 

Keelyn stares at the Force ghost of the Endless Emperor and then she _laughs_. Laughs through the terror and the agony and the relief that feels like poison bubbling through her belly and brain and heart, laughs as if she does not know she is dead, laughs because she knows, _knows_ that everything, every _one_ that she loves is not in the ship, the ship that is an XS Freighter but is not the _Courage_. 

Oh, it _looks_ like the _Courage_ but Keelyn stopped flying that old bucket of bolts not long before she met Theron and Lana, stopped flying it because it needed some minor repairs and why not use one of the other XS Freighters she had access to, it was easy enough to contact Alilia and swap one ship for another. 

And then to send an encrypted message to Ranissa. 

Below her in this dream (nightmare) landscape, her crew has crash-landed the _Meteor_. Valkorian is spouting off about destiny and power and ruling the galaxy and her pitiful crew and all Keelyn can do is laugh, laugh until she is crying, until she is bent nearly double under the weight of worry and regret and the bright, bright, terrible burning of hope. _He doesn't know._

Of course she taunts him. Why wouldn't she, she's stuck here after all in this place that isn't death but it is _a_ death, and then he says something so insightful that she stops laughing so abruptly she staggers, catching herself by sheer will and a little push against his shoulder which should be incorporeal but isn't. 

“Love withers when it is neglected. Left alone too long, love will seek another.” 

She did, she supposes, though she did not, could not, had never loved Corso, Corso who below her is making what is most likely another of their famous last stands, those tight spots she likes (liked) to talk her way out of rather than using her blaster and where he always looks (looked) to her with admiration at her wit and will and resilience. Corso, sweet, gentle, young Corso whose hair was the wrong color and texture (unruly black curls), whose eyes are brown (blue like the sky over Ord Mantell), Corso who touches her like she's something fragile and precious (never forcing her hands over her head, demanding she submit, demanding she beg, demanding and angry and reckless and love, so much love, deep and true and is it possible its deathless when she has been faithless and feckless?). 

_Rogen_ , she lets herself think as she charges down the slope to save the crew who is already dead, reaching out to him past death and destruction and through the Force he promised her surrounded even a terrible, broken woman like her, the Force that has kept them tied together as much as it has kept them separated. She reaches out to him and she _finds_ him as she pulls out her blaster and her scattergun, one aimed at the ghost of Skavak, the other at the ghost of the Voidwolf, and her Jedi, her husband, her _everything_ is a bright, painful supernova protecting the flickering star that is their son, their Atlan, their miracle, and she wraps up a piece of herself that is her heart and sends it out with a shove as she has never offered it before, like a gift without strings. 

_Rogen. I love you._

OoO 

“Dad...dad....DAD!” 

Rogen has the vibrosword in his hand before he's fully awake, the lingering burn of carbonite in the back of his throat making him wretch as Atlan pounds him on the back, and he only drops the sword when he sees the four walls of the shithole where they've taken a room, sees Atlan's blue blue eyes watching him in concern, his wild black hair mingling with his father's as the tall, gangly thirteen year old helps to steady him. 

“Did you feel it?” Rogen manages to croak and Atlan nods, sinking down to sit beside him as Rogen throws his legs over the side of the bed and rakes a hand through his own tumbled black curls. They both need a haircut, he thinks inanely and then he closes his eyes and tries to will away the fatigue and the fog of sleep, the Force coiling sluggishly up from where he keeps it tamped down in his gut. Through it, he feels Atlan shudder, the boy's own power an unstable, tenuous connection. 

“It was...it was mom. She was...she...she...” Rogen pulls his son close as the boy tries not to sob, as his voice breaks and wavers, as he buries his face into his father's shoulder and clings. 

Atlan's mother, his wife, has been dead by the reckoning of the Empire and the Republic, a martyr, a hero, a criminal, a saint, for almost five years. Almost five years Rogen and Atlan have wandered and waited as the Endless Empire has waged war across the galaxy, wandered and waited and kept her alive through stories and laughter and tears and love. Rogen still has some contacts though he uses them as sparingly as he can, afraid to put his son, her son, _their_ son at risk anymore than he has to, this one piece of her he has left save the ship, the _Courage,_ that Ranissa brought to him and that is even now parked in the port of this backwater planet, and one of the contacts was here. 

Here and told him, with the shining fervor of a true believer, that she's alive. His wife is alive, frozen in carbonite, still, in the halls of the Endless Empire, a trophy, and the rage was almost enough to have him lifting the little oily girl with a show of the Force, until she grinned manically. “Been missing yer T-7 unit, there, Jedi?” she'd sneered and then cackled and _Lana_. 

Sleep hadn't come easy for him or for Atlan, who'd been on him as soon as he returned, hungry for any news of the mother who hadn't held him in too long. 

Too long, too late, until tonight when she'd reached out to him through the Force. Keelyn had reached out him, Keelyn who had rolled her eyes every time he'd tried to teach her anything about his life, Keelyn who had disdained his duty and his honor as hokey religion and superstition, Keelyn who when she'd given birth had called not for him, for the father of her baby, but for his former Padawan, for Ranissa, Keelyn who had walked into what she'd known was a trap and had not sent her husband a holo but had instead sent one to her lover, the lover she'd taken and who had come to the husband and the son of his captain and handed over the holo with a sheepish, ashamed, tired face. “She's not...she wasn't...” The young man fidgeted, the scar across his face pulling, and he'd looked down and away from Rogen's bland stare. _He loves her_ , Rogen thought, and knew he had no right to the jealousy, to the pain that stabbed through him, skewering his heart. 

The farmboy from the ass-end of nowhere pressed a silver band on a chain into Rogen's hand, curled his fingers over it, and his brown eyes were empathetic. “She loves you. Don't let her...” The boy swallowed, his voice breaking. “Don't let her wait forever.” 

“Dad, she's really alive,” Atlan whispered and Rogen blew out a long, shaky breath. “We have to go to Odessen.” 

_Keelyn. Hold on. We're here. We...we're waiting. Come back to us._

OoO 

Atlan isn't sure what he expects when they land on Odessen but it isn't to see his mother standing next to Theron Shan through the viewport, her hair still a shocking red, pulled back from a face that is as familiar and dear as his own, isn't how she sets off running full-tilt at them once they come loping down the ramp and throws herself into his father's arms, isn't the breathless sound she makes when his father lifts her off her feet and spins her around, and around, and around, dizzying, isn't how she brackets his father's face in her hands and she's crying and she's laughing and she's cursing. “You fucking Jedi _asshole_.” 

“I'm _your_ fucking Jedi asshole, Keelyn Molechar,” his father whispers and Atlan watches, transfixed, as for the first time ever in his memory, his father leans down and kisses his mother square on the mouth. 

It isn't a ceasefire, he thinks as one of his father's hands and one of his mother's hands reach out and pull and tug until he is surrounded by them, his tall, lean father, the ex-Jedi, his short, curvy mother, the Alliance hero, surrounded and nearly smothered in hope and belonging and love. No, not a ceasefire. 

It's a beginning. 


End file.
